The last time someone tried to change our City Council elections from at large to ward specific the effort failed, primarily because white voters were told that the infamous Nativo Lopez was behind the scheme. And he was. At the time the only way anyone ever figured that we would have more Latinos on the City Council would be via ward-specific elections.

Well now we have an all-Latino City Council and they’re an embarrassment. As the city reels in yet another budget crisis they wasted weeks firing our City Manager, Paul Walters, so they could hire a temp, Kevin O’Rourke, who is costing us over $22K a month. In Santa Ana that passes for progress.

If we had a ward-specific election system it is likely that former Council Member Brett Franklin would have won in Ward 3 last year. Instead a total unknown, Angelica Amezcua, who did not even campaign, won. She of course joined the other Council Members in firing Walters, proving she too is worthless. Continue reading→

Now OC GOP Chairman Scott Baugh is singing a different tune – in the wake of the overwhelming defeat of the Republican Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, by President Barack Obama. I saw Baugh on Rick Reiff’s post-election TV show and he admitted that the GOP better figure out immigration. That is the message that both Iglesias and Onofre are now espousing as well.

Iglesias was victorious in her campaign for the SAUSD School Board. In fact she defeated two Democrats – Valerie Amezcua and Myriam Tinajero, who were supported by liberal SAUSD Trustee John Palacio and by the unions. Continue reading→

SANTA ANA, CA (November 7, 2012) – In an effort to keep Santa Ana residents informed about the local election, the following information is provided. As of 11/07/2012 at 8 am, the Orange County Registrar of Voters Office has released the following results. Please note that this information is UNOFFICIAL until certified on December 11, 2012. For complete election information, please go to http://www.ocvote.com/results.

As expected, Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido is winning handily tonight. The O.C. Voter Registrar has posted the early returns, which are absentee ballots. Here are some of the evening’s highlights:

Mayor Miguel Pulido has a whopping 7,454 votes – David Benavides only has 3,676 votes. George Collins is nipping at Benavides’ heels with 2,523 votes

In a shocker, the unknown schoolteacher Angelica Amezcua is leading in Ward 3, with 6,637 votes, while Santa Ana Planning Commissioner Eric Alderete has 5,097 votes and former Council Member Brett Franklin has 4,172 votes. It is early yet but if this trend continues then Franklin has a good shot as the Latino vote in Ward 3 is clearly split. There are however three candidates splitting up the white vote – Charles Hart, Shane Barrows and Steve Rocco. Continue reading→

Santa Ana Mayoral challenger David Benavides wasn’t on the ballot two years ago, as he had no opponent for his City Council seat. The last time he appeared on the ballot was six years ago, back when he still mentioned his wife and family on his fliers and websites.

So it was a daunting task for Benavides to ramp up his name I.D. this year in a few short weeks, having announced his mayoral campaign rather late in the game.

As such I think he is going to be toast on Tuesday, Nov. 6. But what about the other races? Who will win? Comment here with your picks, including estimated vote percentages and whoever gets the closest will win a free banner ad on our blog for one month, for the business or non-profit of their choice.

Former Santa Ana Council Member Brett Franklin continues to lead in polling for Ward 3, despite the fact that there are quite a few candidates running for that seat, including Planning Commissioner Eric Alderete, who has amassed a vast warchest – largely from contributors who don’t live in Santa Ana.

How is Franklin doing it? I asked him that the other day and he offered an anecdote. He ran into a lady at the supermarket the other day. She was a Latina and she seemed somehow familiar to him. She approached Franklin and said that she and her family voted for him via absentee ballot. Apparently she remembered going to the same school as Franklin, in the fifth grade! Continue reading→

The Santa Ana City Clerk, Mary Huizar, sent me the Santa Ana Council and Mayoral candidates’ new campaign finance reports today. You can read them all by clicking here. The reports are a heck of a read – for one thing it looks like Ward 3 candidate Eric Alderete raised more money than all of the other candidates.

The inside baseball set has assumed that Santa Ana Planning Commissioner Eric Alderete is going to win in Ward 3, in November’s election. However an unpublished poll shows former Santa Ana City Councilman Brett Franklin in the lead. How could this be?

Well, consider that there is no incumbent, as the current Council Member, the disgraced Carlos Bustamante, is not running for re-election. Franklin was the previous Council Member and as such he is the defacto incumbent. He has name I.D. and Alderete is seriously lacking in that area. And Franklin was born and raised here in Santa Ana, while Alderete was born and raised in East Los Angles, and he has been living here perhaps six years at most. Continue reading→

Orange County’s Democrats are generally clueless, but this past June they were particularly out of sorts. They inexplicably gave Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen a free pass, allowing her to focus on electing her fellow Republican, and gay-basher, Robert Hammond as he won a seat on the O.C. Department of Education’s Board of Trustees.

And the Democrats managed to fumble away Orange County’s most Latino seat, allowing it to go to Orange County Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly, who has since been charged with sexual harassment in the workplace. If they had gotten behind Santa Ana Council Member Michele Martinez she might have prevailed in June. Instead organized labor put up their guy, Julio Perez, splitting the Latino vote and allowing Daly to prevail. Continue reading→

The Republican Party of Orange County’s Endorsement Committee met tonight to consider a number of endorsements of local candidates running this November in the General Election. Several Santa Ana candidates came up for endorsement – setting off quite a conversation at times. One additional candidate, SAUSD School Board candidate Cecilia Iglesias, will be discussed by the Endorsement Committee tomorrow night.

Karina Onofre, a Republican running for the Santa Ana City Council in Ward 5, was endorsed with no debate. She is running against lifelong Democrat Roman Reyna, an SAUSD Trustee. Continue reading→

Estela and Angelica Amezcua pulled papers today to run for the Santa Ana City Council, in Wards 1 and 3. It initially appeared that they were running for each other’s wards, based on addresses I found online, however the Santa Ana City Clerk emailed me today to advise that someone on her staff had inadvertently transposed their names on the candidate status report that was posted yesterday. That report has since been corrected.

Angelica is running for the Ward 3 seat that is currently held by and Estela is running for Ward 1. Angelica is challenging disgraced Council Member Carlos Bustamante, who is facing serious sex crime and public theft charges, and Estela is running for the ward represented by Council Member Vince Sarmiento. Continue reading→

I am hearing from multiple sources today that SAUSD Trustee John Palacio is inexplicably considering running for our City Council’s Ward 3. There are already several candidates including Planning Commissioner Eric Alderete, who has the support of almost the entire City Council (Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez has not endorsed anyone yet); O.C. middle manager Charles Hart, a Republican; former Santa Ana City Council Member Brett Franklin, who has Mayor Miguel Pulido’s endorsement; Park Santiago resident Shane Ramon Barrows, a cop in Irvine; former Orange School Board Member Steve Rocco, and Ana Rebecca Valencia-Verdin, a friend of current Ward 3 Councilman Carlos Bustamante, who lives in Floral Park.

Palacio was first elected to the SAUSD School Board in 1998 and re-elected in 2002, 2006 and 2010. He was appointed Board President in 1998, re-appointed in 1999 and served again in 2001. He is involved in the Hispanic Education Endowment Fund, but I am not sure in what capacity as his name does not show up on their financial reports. Continue reading→

Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido’s detractors are befuddled about how exactly he keeps on winning, every two years. What they don’t understand is that their views don’t reflect the views of the residents at large in our city.

Santa Ana is a huge city. The “inside baseball” and chismoso/gadfly set is fairly small, perhaps a hundred people at most. In 2010, mayoral challenger Alfredo Amezcua lined up a lot of these folks – and combined them with the dwindling “Usual Suspects.” Amezcua spent a quarter million dollars and he thought he had victory in the bag. But you see what he was listening to was an echo chamber – and he failed to reach the majority of voters in Santa Ana. Continue reading→

Brett Franklin, a former Santa Ana Council Member, has apparently pulled nomination papers for Ward 3 on the Santa Ana City Council, according to a city insider. Franklin previously represented Ward 3 for two terms. He was replaced by current Council Member Carlos Bustamante, who was recently arrested and now faces a number of felony sex crime and public theft charges. Both Franklin and Bustamante are Republicans, and Franklin is an elected member of the OC GOP’s Central Committee.

I am told that Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido is backing Franklin. The other declared candidates include Eric Alderete, a lawyer who serves on the Santa Ana Planning Commission, and Charles Hart, who ran for Mayor unsuccessfully against Pulido in 2010. Alderete is a Democrat, and Hart is a Republican. Continue reading→